Snow in the Wind
by reenakitty
Summary: Jack Frost once saw a little girl through a window, displaying abilities with ice that only he thought he possessed. He turned away without looking back, never giving thought to her for a decade. When Jack found her again as a young woman, he never imagined that he would become so tangled in her life, and that she would help him see the world through new eyes.
1. Prologue

**Hello! I left FFNet for like a year, but I decided to come back and get serious about practicing my writing. And, through that, my Jelsa fanfiction was born. WOOOOO. ****I recently watched Frozen at the theater, and immediately went home and watched it online again the same day. And then I watched it again the day after. To tell you the least, I really liked Frozen.**

**And I've always loved The Rise of the Guardians, so of course this pairing was for me. **

**Note that this takes place a little over one hundred years after Jack becomes a winter spirit, so he is still on his own and has around two hundred years until he becomes a guardian. It also explains the fact that it seems to be a slightly medieval-ish age in Arendelle, because it was probably a century or two ago. Hope you enjoy! :'D**

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><p>The North wind was cold as ice, and almost all the light had died from the sky. A pale boy with equally pale hair was spinning through the wind as if it were a stream of water, crowing and laughing, alone in the gale. His simple, less-than-warm garments looked frozen in the swirl of snowflakes in the air, until an even stranger vision could be seen: the boy was creating the snowflakes himself, streaming them from his fingertips. He was high above the dark, distant ground, riding nothing but the ferocious winter breeze.<p>

The boy's name was Jack Frost, and he had awoken in a winter's night more than one hundred years previous. Jack had no idea of his purpose in the world, and lived each day as it came, never letting himself form habits or routines. He usually ignored his constant longing for the companionship of other people, but as the years swept by, each faster than the last, it was an almost continuous ache. Having no memory of his life before awaking in that long-ago winter, Jack rarely spoke to anyone for one painful reason: no child, adult or person of any kind could see him. All he knew was that his name was Jack Frost, and that he was seventeen years old. His age or face had never changed, even when he had existed through his first century, nor after.

Pinpricks of light grew in the distance, and Jack dropped farther down in the sky, watching as the city that was sprawling below him grew larger in his gaze. The wind whipped around him, untamed and wild, sometimes lowering him smoothly through the air, and then suddenly dropping him several meters the next second. It was only a few minutes before the city became level with Jack, and he landed lightly in a tree. He crouched, swinging his staff and in slight awe of the castle in front of him. It was probably around a mile in the distance, with a bustling tangle of buildings and streets separating Jack's tree and the large gates of the majestic structure, but Jack could see almost every detail.

Without a second thought and with his usual air of non committed interest, Jack swung from a branch and into the empty air, falling a few feet before the wind caught him. He sped through the wind and into the town with another shout of laughter, as he flipped over a pedestrian man who was unable to see him. He wordlessly told the wind to drop him lower, and swung his wooden staff along the ground, creating patches of ice on the side of a street near a group of children. The wind continued moving him forward, but he heard the delighted shouts of the children as they slid around the ice, before leaving the streets behind in his wake. All that was ahead of him was the huge castle, light spilling out of several windows and across the frozen snow. The sky was fully dark now, the stars able to be seen under a sparse layer of clouds, and the castle looming closer and closer.

Jack jumped out of the air and onto the castle wall as he arrived near it, landing silent and steadily as a cat. He stood up, walking along the wall and deciding what it was that made him go to the castle. It was a large structure of stone, heavily locked and guarded. Not that that would stop Jack if he had a sudden want to enter the castle.

Instead of inspecting the frozen lawn and the impressive front doors, Jack walked along the top of the wall until he reached the corner, and then walked along the next wall. He looked only at the castle, his eyes searching its many windows, covering the side of the building with little stone in between each pane to spare. The moon was large and bright, casting shadows on the base of the castle. Jack, however, looked at his other source of light; the windows.

Each window held a story. The first he came to had a fire dancing merrily inside the stone chamber, looking quite warm despite the frigid air that was outside. It had several large, wooden tables which were overflowing with what looked like unprepared, fresh vegetables. Another room was dimly lit, with bookcases against the far wall. One window was so grimy that Jack could only see a faint, rosy glow through the crusted glass. He imagined people living inside of each room in the castle, and dimly wondered who owned the place.

Turning another corner, a large tree was growing almost against the castle wall, covering a few windows. Beyond the wall, to his left, stretched a forest, nestled next to the castle. Jack gazed to the top of the tree inside the walls, which was around seven stories up, and saw a large, triangular window glowing with light directly next to the topmost branches. He had moved his gaze on, when the light turned off abruptly. Jack's gaze flicked back to the window involuntarily. It was dark and empty for a moment, before a small figure walked past in the shadowy light behind the glass.

In an instant, the wind had sensed Jack's intentions and snatched him up. He flew silently to the tree, landing with perfect balance several feet below the triangle of the window. Something kept him from showing himself, even though he knew that no human would see him. He climbed effortlessly to a place in the tree that was just above and diagonal from the window, so he could see inside at a slight angle, and would still not quite be in view from inside.

It was a dark, obviously large room with light blue, shadowy walls. A tall bed was off to the side, and there was plenty of furniture spread throughout the space. The room still had an empty feeling to it, since it was so big. Jack couldn't help but think that he would rather have a smaller room, if he ever had a room anywhere at all.

His view was suddenly interrupted as a child walked to the window. It was a small, pale girl, probably around the age of six, who had braided hair as white as the snow on the ground. Her posture was upright and elegant, even as a child, her clothing uncreased and expensive-looking. Jack imagined a rich older woman would look the same way. Her eyes were sad, glinting beneath the window, blue as ice.

Jack thought of his own blue eyes and white hair, and wildly wondered for a fraction of a second what it would be like to have a sibling, before he brushed the thought away. The girl was very obviously human, and, although Jack was not sure what he was, he was certain that he wasn't human. Humans aged, and Jack did not age.

The girl was looking outside with longing and sorrow, her entire expression that of an already determined, sad fate. Jack recognized the emotion as what he constantly tried to crush down whenever he felt particularly upset that the people around him could not see him. Desperate wanting for something that should have been theirs, but still outside of their grasp. She stared at the horizon as if their was a battle being fought below the window that had already been lost.

Jack sat down on the branch, setting his staff down across his lap and leaning against the tree trunk, his brow furrowed with barely suppressed feelings of frustration. The way the little girl looked had awakened how he felt beneath his attitude that 'everything was alright'.

_Poor kid. I wonder what's wrong._

The girl stretched a hand out, as if reaching for the world outside, and touched the window. In an instant, frost crackled several inches across the glass and froze the pane, the ice trailing across the window from her fingertips. The girl's hand jumped back, and she cradled it to her chest, her eyes wide and scared.

Jack jumped back at the same time, from his relaxed position into a crouch, gripping his staff and holding it in front of him. His heart pounded in his ears, and he stared wildly as the girl stood, in front of the window. Her expression was scared, but in a strange way. Jack expected a human who had just created frost from nothing to be shocked and terrified. There was definitely fear in the child's face, but not even a touch of surprise. There was only a accepted certainty - a sad and frightening fate already determined. There was only one explanation: that the girl already knew that she had the ability.

Jack sat, frozen in his crouch concealed in the snow-laden tree branches. He watched as the girl stood for a few more moments, keeping her hand against her chest, before climbing into the bed in the darkness of the huge room. He watched the sleeping child for at least an hour, before abruptly standing and willing the wind to carry him back to the tree he had first landed in, across the town and about a mile away from the castle.

There, in the tree, he relived in his mind the child spreading frost along the window, with a single touch of her hand. It was undeniably strange, but, when he looked at his own hands, he no longer felt like a freak of nature. Standing, he took one last look at the castle before letting the wind fly him up, high into the dark, cold sky and away from the sleeping, snow-covered city.

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><p><strong>There we are, a short prologue to set up the rest of my short story. More to coooooooome.<strong>

**I'LL BE YOUR FRIEND IF YOU REVIEW AND GIVE ME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM AND FEEDBACK.**

**Ciao!**


	2. Night One

**YO. Annnnnnnnnd here's the first chapter. Hope you like it! :D**

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><p>It was a frigid December morning in Burgess, Pennsylvania. Jack Frost was sitting on the base of a church's steeple, surveying the small, awakening city as the sun rose above the trees, bringing a faint pink into the dark gray sky.<p>

It was a little over ten years since he had seen the huge castle in the far away city, yet few changes had taken place in the world that Jack had noticed. Jack saw the paper boy making his rounds, delivering the news papers around the city. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, because the paper boy looked like his usual bored self, hardly glancing up as he tossed paper after paper at different household's welcome mats.

Only later that afternoon did Jack care to even look at the news paper. He didn't really enjoy reading all that much, but he had seen a few people talking with interest about the news, and he felt almost as bored as the paper boy had been. He was walking down a narrow, cobblestone street lined with houses when he saw one of the papers from the morning, skittering along the stones of the road and damp with snow. Jack would not have even given a second glance to the paper if he had not remembered the couple conversations he had heard only a few hours previously, chattering about an article.

Jack picked the paper up off of the street and sat down unceremoniously in a snowbank on the side of the rode. He brushed a little snow off of the paper so that the words were visible. Ruffling his hair out of habit, he read the headline, "_New Heir of the Arendelle Throne_". Accompanying the title was a small article, tucked into the corner of the page, which talked about the king and queen of Arendelle deciding that their oldest daughter would be the heir to the throne in the future. It had been speculated that the daughter hadn't been named heir before because the king and queen were planning on having a male heir yet, but the rumors had been laid to rest.

Above the article was a small, grainy black and white photo of a spectacular and familiar castle. Jack suddenly had a flashback of watching the very same castle in the snowy darkness, and of a little girl in a large, triangular window, frosting the glass with her fingertips.

Jack set down the paper in the snowbank beside him, and took to the air with the help of the icy wind. He always thought clearer when he was high above the ground. In a few seconds, the town of Burgess had been reduced to a square of colors on the distant landscape below, and Jack was among the clouds. It was cold and wispy, like standing in a snowy fog, but Jack swung his staff in the air beside himself and ran over the different outcomes in his mind.

It was only a few minutes before Jack shook his head at his own thoughts. He laughed out loud, the decision made.

_I don't have anything better to do._

The wind was suddenly in movement, and Jack sped north through the clouds.

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><p>It was night when Jack reached the castle.<p>

The windows were, again, all lit up, and it looked only as if minutes had passed since Jack had last been there, instead of an entire decade. The whole way to the castle he had been musing about who the heir was, when he had a feeling that he already knew.

Jack took no time surveying the castle walls as he had his first visit, and rode the wind all the way around the castle until he saw the old, large tree that looked as it were leaning up against the side of the magnificent building. The top of it's branches only brushed the tip of a large, triangular window, already dark, with glass glinting in the starlight. Jack landed in the up most branches of the tree with a slight sense of deja-vu, crouching right above the window and peering inside. However, he only had a moment of relaxation in the tree, as a great scraping sound suddenly ground into the noiseless night, and the glass of the window warped as its bottom half was opened upwards.

In a single moment, Jack had unconsciously jumped backwards, landing still in the tree, but concealed from the view of the window by other branches. A pair of blue gloved hands were the only things that Jack could see from his new angle, farther back in the tree, barely visible on the stone windowsill. Forgetting that he was invisible to others, Jack hid himself more securely in the branches, until he was unnoticable between the green of pine needles and the white of the snow.

The hands were suddenly followed by a body, a girl propping herself out of the window and onto the sill. She wore a midnight-blue dress and a violet cloak around her shoulders along with the blue gloves, and her snow-white hair was knotted at the back of her head, somewhat messily. Stray locks of hair stuck up around her face. Yet Jack was not paying attention to her hair, because it was immediately clear that the little girl that he had seen in the window ten years ago was a little girl no longer. With a slight expression of shame and slight, guilty eagerness, the girl's ice-blue eyes were wide and purposeful, flickering around for the trace that someone would catch her. Jack stayed silent and unseen.

Deeming the coast clear, the young heir of Arendelle switched her gaze to a branch of the tree that stretched underneath her window. With the practiced ease of someone who most likely climbed from her window and into the tree quite often, the girl pushed herself off the windowsill and landed on the branch, letting the momentum propel her into catching herself on the tree trunk. With a slight breath of relief, the girl picked her way down the remaining seven stories of the tree, the hard part apparently done.

Jack watched as she jumped to the ground from a low branch, hurried to a small gate in the side of the castle wall, looked back once, before disappearing beyond the wall. He waited until she was fully out of his vision before he took to the wind and reached the snowy ground. He decided to follow her the rest of the way on foot.

Through the gate and past the wall, Jack watched the footprints of the girl leading into the dark forest. He himself left no trace of his presence in the snow, but the trail of the girl made her easier to track. The forest grew darker still as the little moonlight that managed to filter through the entwining branches of the leafless trees became more and more sparse. Jack could see the girl a little farther ahead, and he made little effort to hide himself, unless she turned around to look back. Then he would immediately dart behind the closest tree, barely concealing an amused chuckle, or jump into a tangle of branches above the path. He was still unsure why he was hiding himself, when all past experiences with humans had led him to believe that not one person alive could see him.

When Jack was growing a bit uneasy to why the princess was traveling so far into the woods at night, she appeared to stop, and Jack stopped as well, although he was still quite far inside the cover of trees. The girl had found an opening, because Jack could see that she was standing in a clearing of moonlight, although the source seemed brighter than the light of the moon even beside the castle. He moved his head slightly and saw a glitter across the ground in front of her. The princess was standing on the edge of a lake, bathed in a cold glow.

Jack decided to break off from the path, and headed into the dense, yet brittle and dead undergrowth to his left, ghosting over the snow and around the trees. After a few moments, he too was at the edge of the lake, looking over the frozen water, gleaming as if under a silver sun. Still slightly under the cover of trees, Jack was mostly concealed from the girl, although he could see her bright violet cloak through the small gaps in the branches.

She appeared to be simply staring out, across the lake. Jack walked towards her a few paces, until he was directly behind the spiny tree that hid him from the girl. He peered around to see her expression, and wasn't surprised that, once she came into view, she looked on the verge of tears. She was looking at the moon as if it had wronged her, and her hands, which were clasped in front of her, were shaking slightly.

Several more minutes passed before the girl knelt down to sit on the frozen shore, her cloak spreading out, a splash of color on the snow. She lifted her hands out in front of her, palms up, and stared at them, apparently willing for an answer to show itself. For a moment, she looked as if she were about to pull one of her gloves off, before she abruptly decided otherwise, taking one arm and cradling it to her chest with her other. Her gaze returned to the moon, and Jack, feeling reckless, turned and entered the forest again. He was only a few paces from the lake shore as he walked towards the girl, but he was again, concealed in the undergrowth. After a few moments, he was directly behind her, behind a tree; silent and unmoving.

She was still bent over on the ground. With a sudden chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold, Jack stepped out from the cover of the trees. For a moment, he thought about his other experiments, and how no one had ever been able to see him. The girl still sat, turned away from him in the snow, unnoticing. Jack didn't realize that he was holding his breath, until he hitched his staff lower in his hand and skimmed it over the ground, making a crackling sound in the slightly frozen snow.

Immediately, the girl whirled around, suddenly on her feet, her eyes wild and shocked. Jack waited, not feeling to his own racing heartbeat. The unconscious need to hide himself from this girl for the last hour had to mean something.

There was only one thought in his head. _Please. Please, please, please. Let this loneliness be finally over. Please._

And, in a single moment, his question was answered. With a shriek, the girl staggered backwards, her eyes widening with fear as they found him. She tripped over a stick on the shore, and fell, backwards, onto the frozen lake. A flash of panic ripped through Jack as he saw her, on the ice, and he leaped forwards from his stance in the snow, immediately by her side and trying to help her up. He did not know why the sudden fear of her falling through the ice hit him, but, when he was crouched beside her, he regained rational thought. He realized that the ice by the shore was most likely several inches deep, if not frozen solid, and that she was not in any danger at all.

The girl yelled again, in fear, and scooted backwards, away from Jack, before getting up and jumping onto the shore. As soon as she hit the ground she was running, her cloak billowing out behind her in a violet cloud. Jack saw how fast she was, and realized with frustration that he was going to have to fly to catch her, and flying would probably scare her even further. With a groan of annoyance, Jack was caught up by the wind, and sped towards her. He easily overtook her in only a few seconds, and whipped around. He landed on the ground, hard, facing her as she ran towards him. He realized a second too late that he had timed the distance between them wrong, and that she was running too fast to stop.

The girl bowled Jack over with another muffled scream. He blinked the dizziness away, on the ground, realizing that he had hit the back of his head. The girl had landed on top of him, and was currently struggling to disentangle her limbs and her cloak from him, breathing fast and hard, tears of fear gleaming on her cheeks. Before she had the chance, Jack flipped them both over, so that he was on top of her. She yelled again, struggling harder than ever, and he had to pin both of her wrists down in the snow.

"What do you want?" screeched the girl, spitting hair out of her mouth. All elegance that she had retained previously was gone. Jack watched her with slight amusement, as she had the exact expression of an angry dog that he had seen a few years previously, her pretty face twisted in fear and rage. "Get off of me - you - you _freak_ -"

The girl again began struggling, furiously attempting to loosen Jack's hold on her wrists. He, in reply, tightened his grip, watching as her fear got the better of her. She stilled, breathing heavily, and her anger left her face. She looked tired, terrified and desperate.

"Please let me go," said the girl, starting to tremble. She still looked slightly determined to escape, but Jack could tell that the fight was leaving her.

Jack, finally relaxing, slowly let the situation dawn on him. There was a living, breathing, human girl, right in front of him, who could see him. Her body was underneath of him, the skin of her wrist tangible in his hands, when every other human before her could simply walk through Jack as if he was not even there.

"You can see me? You're human?" asked Jack breathlessly, still shocked and unsure.

"What are you even talking about? Are you crazy?" yelled the girl, struggling again for a moment before she was, again, spent. The replied questions were answer enough.

Jack laughed, and then laughed again, harder. Wonder and excitement charged through his entire being, and he jumped up, off of the girl and did a flip over her. Apparently in shock, the girl gave him a look that told him he was clearly insane. She scrambled up, turning to sprint down the path again, but Jack grabbed her arm, stopping her. She looked back at him, glaring with her tear streaked face as he continued to grin uncontrollably.

"Let_ go_ of me!" she shouted, attempting to yank her arm from his grasp.

"No, I don't think I will," said Jack, making his decision.

A small sob escaped from the girl in desperation, and Jack suddenly realized how - well, _inhuman_ he was being. Without releasing his grip, he attempted to reassure her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, "God, I'm never going to hurt you. You're the first person that has been able to see me in so long. . ."

The length of the time that he had been alone dawned on him, and he almost shuddered. The girl, taking advantage of his moment of distraction, yanked back her arm again and almost went free.

"No, you don't understand, it would probably be the worst thing in the world for me to hurt you, I mean, I could kiss you!" Jack said quickly. He immediately realized it was the wrong choice of words when he saw the girl's look of complete disgust.

"Hey, it's just an expression," Jack fumbled.

The girl stayed silent, still looking slightly panicked.

Jack thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Okay, I'm going to let you go, but you have to remember that if you run away, I'm just going to catch you again."

The girl stared at him. It was several moments before she gave a short and fast nod.

Jack turned around so that he was facing down the pathway, towards the lake. He slowly let go of her arm, and the girl snatched it back, rubbing where his grip had left an indent in her skin. He felt bad for a minute, watching as her eyes desperately darted around, trying to find a crack in his barrier. He was blocking her way to the castle.

"The g-guards will be here any minute now. I told them that if I was gone longer than half an hour, that s-something was wrong," said the girl after a moment.

"No, you snuck out of the window, and I doubt that anyone knows you're outside of your room," replied Jack.

The girl shuddered, her last and most desperate card having been played. She looked sad and almost defeated.

"What do you want from me?" she finally said, quietly, her anger at herself for being so helpless, obvious.

Jack thought for a moment, trying to decipher his feelings. "I want to talk to you, I want to know what the world looks like from someone elses eyes, what it's like to live with other people, your daily routine -" he stopped, unable to word the rest of his thoughts.

The girl just looked even more scared. Her white hair was messy and tangled around her face, half up and half around her shoulders, glinting with silver in the moonlight. Her blue eyes had still not yet lost their wideness of shock.

She, again, stayed silent.

Jack tried to think of how he could make her relax a tiny bit. "At least tell me you name?"

It was another minute before she answered. "N-No."

Jack sighed, sadness and frustration mixing together as he stepped aside, showing her the empty path heading back to the castle. He was done. The girl obviously was not going to relent.

She gave him the same look as she had a few minutes before, letting him know that, in her eyes, he was mentally insane.

"You're strange," was all she said, before taking off down the pathway, running towards the castle. She did not look back once.

Jack sighed again. He had lost this time, but he was in no means going to give up. He had lived alone in the world for too long.

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><p><strong>There we are. Yep, done. Woo.<strong>

**And, just letting you know, when Jack got really freaked out that Elsa was on the ice, it was like his subconscious was telling him, "Bad things happened when a girl you cared about almost fell through ice." And, without remembering how he sacrificed his life to save his sister, he still remembered the feeling of fear for her life. THE MORE YOU KNOW.**

**Byeeeeee.**


	3. Night Two

**Sorry I haven't updated in awhile. It's the last week of the semester, and I was too busy freaking out and studying for two finals every night to find time to write. -.- Feeling pretty drained.**

**But, nonetheless, here is your update! Thanks Scryer-LuqGaru, MaidOf60Seconds, Tears of a Spirit, Guest, annimo 2, Smallsparrow, Miki Mae, hogwartsjaguar, jinx777, and Minnie for reviewing! YOU GUYS ARE SO WONDERFUL AND NICE. I DEDICATE THIS CHAPTER TO ALL OF YOUUUU.**

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><p>Jack was sitting in the tree outside of Elsa's large, triangular window. It had taken the better part of the last couple of days for Jack to finally overhear the girl's name. He had been listening for it ever since he let her run past him in the woods, butting his head into quite a lot of conversations inside the town until he found success in one of the local shops. He was currently relaxing in the crook of a couple branches, his staff laying across his lap, his arms crossed behind his head. He had waited each night, under the light of the waxing moon, sometimes dimmed by clouds, for Elsa to again sneak out from the window. Jack couldn't help but relive his first meeting with her in his head several times over, trying to take it apart and decide what went wrong and what he could have done differently.<p>

Jack was frustrated. He had never even talked to a human before, let alone a human girl, and he barely knew how to speak properly when he was interacting with other talking beings. He wanted to fix whatever it was that he had done. He guessed that perhaps straddling and trapping her had been a bit of a set-off, but what else could he have done? He had only been trying to stop her long enough to get her to listen, and she would have run away if he hadn't done anything. Jack was frustrated and confused. He wished that maybe a boy his own age had been the one to first see him; that would have made all of this confusion much clearer.

Then there was the matter of Elsa's powers. She hadn't shown any traces of it when he had seen her the few nights before, but she had had them when she was a child. And Jack had a feeling that Elsa was simply trying to conceal her abilities now, judging by the look on her face when she had thought she was alone on the shore of the frozen lake. If she tried not to feel them for too long she would probably explode. Jack lifted a hand and silently willed frost to grow on his upward facing palm. Instantly, the cold obeyed, crackling upwards through the air, fractals branching out until he held a spiky statute of frost in the shape of a perfect, eight point snowflake. It was effortless, natural. Jack wondered how the ability worked for Elsa. He silently commanded the frost to shatter in his hand, and he hefted up his staff, touching it to the underside of the branch above him. Where the wood met wood, ice spiraled across the bark until the branch was patterned far more intricately than the other frost on the other branches.

Just as it had the first time, the grinding of the opening window startled Jack. He jumped into a crouch, his staff gripped tightly in his hand. The only difference now was that the thing making his heart beat so fast was adrenaline, excitement, hope, and slight relief. In that moment he didn't care that Elsa was a girl.

She climbed onto the window almost stiffly, the tension she was feeling immediately evident. She didn't meet his eyes, but clearly knew that he was there.

"What took you so long?" exclaimed Jack, deciding that it would be better to be blunt than beat around the bush. "I've waited out here for, like, three days."

Elsa pushed herself off of the window ledge, and landed with practiced balance, dusting herself off without removing her blue gloves. "That isn't my fault."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Uh, yeah, it is."

Elsa looked at him for the first time, and in her glaze was a dignified glare. Her fear was only somewhat concealed, her hands trembling slightly in their clasped position in front of her. Without another word, she moved and started climbing the tree nimbly towards the ground. Jack stared after her for a moment as she descended, frustration prickling the back of his neck, before he jumped out of the tree, and landed on the ground, having reached the snow several moments before Elsa. Jack crossed his arms as he looked at Elsa, slightly triumphant at the shocked wideness of her eyes as she watched him take the seven-story drop, light as a feather. Her face immediately hardened however, and as soon as she reached the ground she turned and began to walk regally forward, her cloak cutting a billowing path through the icy wind towards the gate to the woods. Jack followed her, a few steps behind, a little at loss for things to say. How could he talk to her if she would never reply?

They passed through the gate and into the trees. The moon was hidden behind a few clouds, so it was less bright than in had been three nights ago.

When they had been walking down the path for some time and Jack could see the lake in the distance over Elsa's shoulder, the girl stopped suddenly. Jack stopped as well, almost holding his breath, waiting warily.

There was another few minutes where Jack stared at the violet back of Elsa's cloak. She finally turned, and the cloak turned into a deep purple wave in the air, wrapping around her body as she spun around. Her face was angry and confused, guarded and just as wary as he was.

"Who are you?" asked Elsa through clenched teeth. She stared at him as if the fate of the world would be determined from his reply.

Jack swallowed. "I'm Jack Frost."

"Where are you from?" she shot back immediately. However, some of her urgency left her after the first question was over, and it was clear that Jack intended to cooperate.

"Burgess, Pennsylvania."

"Why are you here?"

"To talk to you!" Jack said, brandishing his staff almost aggressively in his eagerness. Elsa took a step back, unconsciously swiping a hand over her braided hair.

Jack immediately took a step forward to follow, without thinking.

"Why?" she asked quietly.

It hadn't occurred to Jack that he would have to explain himself so quickly, and he lowered his staff, trying to find the words to rationalize his story. A slight breeze rustled in the tops of the trees above them, but didn't reach the ground below the tangles of branches. Jack put a hand in his own hair, gripping it, trying to pull the right answer from his mind and keep himself anchored to the earth.

"I. . . I have never spoken to anyone before. Ever," said Jack slowly, watching for signs that Elsa was going to run away.

It took a moment for her to digest the information. 'What do you mean 'never'? Don't you have parents? People you know in Pennsylvania?"

She sounded as desperate as Jack was, trying just as hard to rationalize everything. It seemed clearer and clearer that she was stifling her powers.

"I don't know anyone," answered Jack, "And I never have. You are the first living person I have talked to in my entire. . . existence." Jack found it hard to say the word life. It suddenly didn't seem to apply to him, as he looked down at his seventeen-year-old hands, having never changed in the past century.

Elsa closed her eyes, taking in a shaky breath. Jack took another step towards her, his foot crunching in the frozen snow, and her eyes flashed open immediately, as hard as steel.

"Don't come near me," she said, attempting to disguise the tremble in her voice. "I can protect myself from you now, and if you make any move to hurt me, I will take my leave immediately."

Jack froze, trying to figure out his next move, more frustration jolting through him with every moment.

"I promise, I am not going to hurt you," he said finally, wincing at the brittleness of his own voice. The situation was getting hopeless; he had to make her understand before she ran away. Elsa was probably teetering on the edge of deciding whether or not she should make a break for it, and if Jack wasn't careful, she was going to tip faster than he originally thought.

Elsa didn't answer, still glaring with fear at him, her gaze darting around every few seconds. Jack recognized the look; she was trying to find a way through his defenses, because, he was, again, blocking her way down the path and back to the castle.

"Why did you even come out here? You knew I would still be waiting!" Jack shot at her, louder than he had intended, his eyes narrowing.

Elsa bit her lip, fear showing clearly in her expression now. She didn't believe that he was harmless to her. "I don't know. It was stupid. It's just - you let me go, and -"

She seemed unable to correctly word her thoughts for a moment.

"I don't know," she repeated again, her gaze sweeping to the snow. She sounded tired. "I probably shouldn't have. But I knew that I would probably regret it if I never found out."

Jack's eyes widened. He was shocked by the turn of events. "What do you mean? Found out what?"

Elsa's eyes rose upward to meet his once more, and for the first time that night, she was the eager one alongside her fear. "If I never found out if you were like me. I felt it, right by the lake that night. You had - just the same feel. I've never felt anyone else even similar to me, and you felt exactly the same."

Jack's heart picked up, if it were possible. Without words, he lifted his staff and pointed it at Elsa. Instantly, bitter terror replaced the eagerness on her face, and she took another step back, fumbling inside her cloak for something.

"What are you doing -?" she said, clumsily drawing a short knife just as she broke off into a scream. Jack had shot a bolt of frost directly towards her. However, right before it struck her, it burst into a cloud as if it had hit an invisible wall. Elsa still gave a few shrieks as the snow rained down around her, catching in her pale hair and glittering in the dim light. She brandished the knife in alternating directions, always returning it to Jack, but sometimes switching to point its quivering blade at innocent snowflakes, floating down to the ground.

When all the snow had fell from the air, Elsa stopped swinging her weapon around, and looked up at Jack. Shock and fear and hope were intermingling on her face.

"I - I - you -" Her mumblings were almost incoherent, until she dropped the knife where it fell, forgotten into the trampled snow around her. Then she ran at Jack, and he promptly dropped his staff in surprise, instinctively raising his arms to protect himself from the girl sprinting towards him. Instead of attacking Jack, however, she simply grabbed both of his outstretched hands, pulling them to her face so she could examine them and the patterns of frost that were always present on his palms. Completely shocked by the turn of events, Jack was rendered speechless. The wind picked up for a moment, and a few snowflakes landed on Jack's face and melted on his suddenly warm cheeks.

"How do you do it? How do you control it?" Elsa asked fiercely. She looked up from his hands and into his gaze, her eyes as blue as ice, and shockingly close to his face, barely suppressed hope and excitement intermingling with determination clear in her expression. He couldn't help feeling how warm her hands were, gripping his, and how her pulse was clear and fast against the skin of his wrist. His cheeks flushed further.

"I. . . I can teach you," said Jack finally.

Elsa stared at him for another moment before apparently realizing her position. She took a step back from him and folded her hands behind her back. Her face was again, completely proper and elegant. Jack, however, was still in shock.

"What do I need to do?" asked Elsa.

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><p><strong>THERE WE ARE. And don't get scared if I don't update a little bit. I'll do it as soon as I caaaaan. It may be the weekend, but I still have several essays and presentations due today and tomorrow. Ugh. I would much rather be writing fanfiction, but. What can you do?<strong>

**CIAO.**


	4. Night Three

**Hello, people! WOWOWOWOWOW. Sorry I haven't updated in so. Frehcking. Long. Ergh.**

**Sorry again, but it's just going to be a short chapter so I can get back into the flow of things. Meh. Sorry agaaaaiiin and agaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiin.**

**I haven't updated in months. That is unacceptable, even by my own lazy standards. To those of you who review, you guys are awesome. I mean, even if you don't review you're still awesome. But those little reviews just make my day completely, so, if you have just a minute or two to write constructive criticism/comments/feedback/anything, I will just love you for awhile. :3 (I also, most likely, will stalk your profile. Teehee.)**

**THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO THE FFNET USER PazGranger, A.K.A COTA FOR DRAWING AMAZING FANART OF JACK AND ELSA, BASED OFF OF THE PROLOGUE. ( /p/kdO9zelWp2/) YOU ARE THE EPITOME OF AWESOME, MY FRIEND.**

**Hope you guise like the chaptaahh.~**

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><p>The night was silent, and even Jack's breath misted in front of him in the frigid air. The trees of the woods cast dark, long shadows across the snow. The castle was almost completely shaded, the wall rising around it blending into the shadows of the trees.<p>

Jack was leaning against the trunk of one of the trees, causing snowflakes to swirl in patterns in the air in front of him. Although it was slightly easier to create snow or ice with his staff, Jack found his hands more accessible in lots of situations. He always kept his staff with him, however, because he only felt comfortable when he was holding it. Sometimes it helped for him to be able to reach with his staff in places that he wouldn't be able to reach with his fingers.

He assumed that Elsa didn't have a staff. She most likely was not doing anything towards using her powers at all, really. Jack pondered about this for a moment before he heard a slight noise. He turned his head to the side, towards the castle, to see a distant figure. The noise was that of far away, crackling footsteps in the nearly-frozen ground. It was easy to spot the violet cloak against the dark snow in the moonlight. Jack's heart beat quickened, but he did not change his position. The footsteps still sounded a little far off, but Elsa would be there in a few moments.

When Elsa reached Jack, he could see that she was looking annoyed. He had been looking forward for her to be more like the night before, eager and hopeful, but it seemed that she had returned to her usual mood, even if it was a little less agitated. He ruffled his hair with a sense of looming frustration to come, his optimism fading slightly.

"Hello," said Jack, smiling tentatively and raising an eyebrow.

Any hope of friendliness was then crushed. "What do I have to do?" said Elsa, echoing her statement from the night before, her tone strictly business-like.

Jack suppressed a sigh and decided to cooperate. Wordlessly leading Elsa over to the nearest tree, he began planning a lesson inside of his head.

Elsa looked at him quizzically when they stopped in front of the large pine, with more than just a little anger in her expression. Jack motioned to the front of the tree without answering.

Elsa let out a small grunt of frustration. "Well? What am I supposed to do?"

Jack rolled his eyes wordlessly, causing Elsa to narrow her own in growing contempt. The negative expression soon left her face, however, as ice began to crackle along the front of the tree trunk. Jack's hand was barely extended, his fingers limp yet focused towards the tree. Elsa watched, her gaze growing wider, as the frost extended in a spiraling pattern of continuing ovals. Web after slender strand of beautiful ice danced across the surface of the wood until there wasn't a place on the trunk that was bare. The ice stopped immediately, a small crackling noise as it settled into its new home, a smooth, sheer coat over the rough bark.

Elsa let out a shaky breath, and with a tone incredibly different than the one she had used moments before, she asked quietly, "How did you do that?"

Jack, still silent, hefted his staff in one hand and tapped the center of the icy tree trunk with its tip. A web of cracks instantly spread from where the pattern of frost had been struck, and the ice shattered and fell into the snow at the foot of the tree. Once more, the trunk was bare.

"Copy me," said Jack, gesturing towards the tree trunk again. Elsa hesitantly complied, slowly extending her trembling, gloved hand.

"You have to take off the glove," scoffed Jack, rolling his eyes. When Elsa simply stared without making any movements, his confusion faltered.

"Uh, are you going to take them off?" he asked.

Eyes filling with suppressed fear, Elsa shook her head mutely.

Jack felt his frustration grow larger. "You have to. What am I supposed to teach you about controlling your powers if all you're going to nurture is the need to suppress them?"

The silence between the secret pair in the woods was thick with tension as Elsa's eyes narrowed. Jack knew that her anger was less directed towards him this time and was more towards herself and her own fear. He waited patiently, never looking away from her, despite his slight embarrassment for staring so determinedly at her eyes for so long. They were astonishingly blue, bright and clear as Jack would imagine that the frozen lake would be in the sparkling sunlight.

Elsa finally looked down at her hands and, as if she were pained by the action, slowly started removing her left glove, finger by finger. Jack silently let out the breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding, looking away from her face quickly as Elsa finished removing the glove.

The tree was already two feet away from Elsa, but she stepped back anyways, glaring at it with pain in her expression and fear written over every movement she made. She slowly raised her bare hand towards the tree, and Jack saw it trembling as if she were cold. Intuition told Jack that Elsa wasn't cold in the least. Her face was growing more and more distressed, as if her pain was growing. The shaking increased until Elsa's entire body was trembling slightly.

"Elsa, it's okay," Jack tried to soothe her. The poor girl looked as if she were trying to lift something up that was significantly heavier than her.

She opened her mouth quickly, but then closed it without answering.

"Elsa," whispered Jack. He reached out his hand and hesitantly took hold of her free hand, the blue material of the glove soft between his fingers. He was immediately relieved that she hadn't slapped his hand away. Her eyes found his, and she didn't need to speak to let him know that she was more terrified than she had ever been before in her life.

"You need to let go of this. This fear of your power, of yourself. You have a gift, and you're only going to hurt yourself if you continue to attempt to conceal it. Come on, Elsa. You can do it. Just let it go." Jack's voice was barely a whisper as he looked intently into her eyes again. He pushed aside his sudden awkwardness and tried to lend the girl his strength.

All in a single second there was a flash of blinding white light, a strangled scream as the hand he had been holding was ripped from his own, and a sudden pain in his face.

Jack groaned and propped himself up on his elbows, spitting out a mouthful of snow. Elsa was on her knees a foot away from him, her hands clutching fistfuls of the snow in front of her. There were tears frozen on her cheeks and she was staring, horror-struck, at something in front of her. Jack sat up, dimly realizing in the back of his mind that the white light had not been created by Elsa, and had in fact been the blur of snow in his vision as he was blasted forwards onto the frozen white ground. He followed Elsa's gaze to the front of the tree he had frosted only minutes earlier and felt a mixture of amusement and amazement.

The tree looked as if had grown a pelt of translucent ice spikes on it bark, each stake wickedly sharp and ten inches long, jutting into the air as if the tree was an icy porcupine. Elsa looked utterly terrified at what she had done, while Jack was only realizing the job he had signed up for.

"Well, there's a bit of work to be done," said Jack, smiling drily at Elsa. She turned to face him, brimming with emotions.

"Don't you see Jack? I'll never be able to control it!" cried Elsa, throwing both of her hand in the air with hopelessness. "You can try to teach me how you make pretty patterns all you like, but I'm different! I've never been able to control any of it! I've tried for my entire life."

With her disheveled hair and the frozen tears on her cheeks, she looked like she truly had no hope. Jack, however, hoped otherwise.

"Stop it," he said quietly. Elsa immediately fell silent, apparently unable to speak anyways.

"You _are_ like me. Whether you like it or not. You just have a little more work to do. But I'll help you through it, and with the sacrifice I'm making, you'll at least not give up." Jack inwardly winced. He was laying on the guilt pretty thick. Helping Elsa wasn't a sacrifice at all: it was an excuse to interact with someone. And Jack needed and wanted that more than he had ever needed or wanted anything before.

Jack got to his feet, hefted his staff in his hand, and the pointed the thin shaft of wood at the icy daggers pointing out the side of the tree. They immediately shattered into a burst of snowflakes, and Jack felt a bit of satisfaction at the tiny flicker of hope that flared up in Elsa's eyes. He stepped over to her and helped her to her feet, stooping down to pick up her snowy and trampled blue glove with his other hand at the same time. He tucked the glove safely into a pocket in his leather vest just as Elsa tugged her hand out of his with a slight glare. He felt indignant for a moment, first at Elsa for making it seem as if he had wanted to keep holding her hand, which he had simply forgotten he was holding it. And second at himself for feeling slightly hurt as she did it.

Jack brushed his feelings aside quickly. They would have to wait. He instead made the steadfast decision that he was going to help Elsa control her powers if it was the last thing he did. He had been bored and alone for too long.

"Do it again," Jack told Elsa. "Concentrate and bend the ice to your will."

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><p><strong>And there we have it. The long-awaited chapter.<strong>

**No more of these sucky promises. No, I am not promising that I will have a new chapter up soon. I _will_ have a new chapter up soon. I have no room for questioning it. There. TAKE THAT, REENA. THOSE ARE YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. NOW DO THEM.**

**Dat "Let It Go" reference. ;D**

**Sorry for the wait, guys. D: Thanks for reading! **

**(Reviews are literally the best by the way. ;D If you have just a minute to jot down a sentence and tell me what you thought, it just makes my day.)**

**BAI.**


	5. Night Four

**I know it took awhile, but here's a specially long chapter just for you guys. :3 This one really touched my heart while writing it, and I hope it does the same for you!**

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><p>A little ways away from an ice covered tree, Jack Frost lounged in a snow bank. His hair stuck up in icy white spikes and his breath came in frosted clouds, but he looked comfortable in the frigidness of the night. The moon was as pale as his skin, high above the tree tops of the forest, winking down and shining in the silvery strands of Elsa's hair, who was a few feet away. She was facing the icy tree, breathing shallowly, her gaze darting from the tree and then to Jack and then back again.<p>

"Another go? Really? I think I've done enough," came Elsa's wavering voice. Jack could tell that she was trying to seem indifferent yet confident, while her wariness was showing through.

"Come on. You still haven't gotten it yet," replied Jack, "But you're close!" he added when he saw Elsa's expression drop slightly. Truth be told, she didn't really seem all that close, as the tree was still covered in the wickedly sharp ice spikes that Elsa had been trying not to create. Her power was not yet even close to being controlled, and it had been a little more than a fortnight since her first lesson from Jack. All he had instructed her to do was lightly frost the tree bark, but Elsa was unable to control her abilities that far and the tree was always covered in spikes by the end of her attempts. Elsa would let out an animalistic cry as the power tore itself out of her warily outstretched hands, and was hardly ever able to stay standing when it left her to the tree. Jack had lost count with how many times he had leapt up from his post to catch her before she fell back from the blast.

"I'm trying so hard Jack, but nothing seems to work," said Elsa helplessly, temporarily letting go of her usual regal demeanor. "If I were to simply not concentrate on controlling it, I would probably have the same result."

Interest suddenly sparked Jack's mind at Elsa's choice of words.

"I'm not sure if you're right about that," he started excitedly, "Try it again, and just relax."

Elsa argued with him for a few minutes more before she finally relented, returning to her position of warily facing the ice covered tree. Jack reached out with his staff from his crouch in the snowbank and gently prodded the ice spikes on the tree's bark. They shattered immediately into particles as small and fluffy as snowflakes, floating softly to the ground, leaving the tree looking as if it had been bare all winter instead of being frozen over and over again as it had been during the lessons.

Jack stayed away, to the side of Elsa and the tree. The young female heir was glaring at the bark as if it had personally wronged her, her fingers clenched into pale fists at her sides. Jack looked down into the pocket of his leather cloak, seeing Elsa's velvety blue gloves poking out of a pocket. He had made a habit of holding them for her each lesson so that she had one thing less to worry about. Elsa didn't move an inch for several minutes, and Jack could hear her breathing, taking slow, deep inhales of the frosty air in an apparent effort to calm herself. She shook slightly, but he knew it wasn't from the temperature. The cold never bothered her.

"Jack, I don't know what to do. I'm scared to try again, but I know that if I don't try, nothing will ever happen for my control," she stammered, without moving her gaze from the bark. "I'm torn between wanting something to happen, and wanting nothing to happen." Jack saw as delicate patterns of frost started to crackle into being on Elsa's palms and the back of her hands, lacing slowly up her arms. "Won't it show some control if nothing happens at all?"

The desperation was clear in her voice, and Jack did his best to awkwardly soothe her. "Erm, well, if you just stand there, nothing's probably going to happen, so what's the harm in trying? The worst you can do is make more spikes, right?"

He winced at the brittleness of his own words, and Elsa whipped a glare at him over her shoulder that seemed to say, _you are not helping_, before turning to gaze stonily at the tree again. Jack felt a wild urge to angrily express to her how much easier the whole situation would be if she were also a boy, and wouldn't need reassurances like this one. But he held his tongue, as he knew that this would probably do the opposite of helping her control her powers in the least. And besides, she probably couldn't help her emotions anyways, so it was useless to tell her to act more like a male. Jack sighed internally. He had been consoling her for more than a week now at the end of every failed attempt, and his inspiring words had run out.

Jack watched as Elsa closed her eyes and continued breathing. She visibly forced herself to unclench her hands, and they swung by her sides, her face strained at the simply action. She slowly brought her hands forward and up, until her palms were facing the bark of the tree.

And slowly, slowly, Jack saw a few tiny, weak snowflakes peeling themselves off of her skin and floating to the front of the tree. He felt his heart beating in his ears, and held completely still, not wanting to breath too hard and knock the snowflakes from their unsteady path. The snow slowly grew faster and more substantial, Elsa's hands starting to shake slightly. Jack saw the pink of blood rising in her cheeks, and the way that her knuckles were shown white against the tightened tendons and skin of her strained hands. It looked as if she was fighting against breathing, and Jack had a sudden realization a second too late as he saw her expression, pinched and screwed against the current of her power. Her tight face suddenly split into a yell as she clenched her eyes shut and fell backwards, jets of solid ice coming into being as if from her palms and impaling themselves in the trunk of her unfortunate victim.

Jack rushed forward at the same instant and, for the umpteenth time, caught Elsa just as she was blasted backwards onto the ground. Her momentum was stronger than usual and Jack promptly lost his balance as he caught her, at least cushioning her from the worst of the fall.

When the shock and adrenaline of the moment faded away, Jack looked up from his position of laying on his back on the ground with Elsa on top of him. He was distracted for a moment by the way Elsa's hair caught the light when in was a millimeter away from face, before focusing on the giant pole of ice that was jutting out of the tree ten feet away from them. It must have been five feet long by itself, buried in the trunk. Elsa scrambled off of Jack to her feet, before catching sight of the ice she had created. Jack has the sudden urge to laugh at the size of the thing, but fortunately didn't get the chance before Elsa let out a quiet sob and sank to her knees. Pulling himself up and walking forward a few steps to where Elsa knelt, he crouched beside her, picking up his staff where he had dropped it a minute ago and gripping it tightly, a little at loss of something to say.

Instead, Jack examined the ice a bit more, scrutinizing it with his gaze. It was probably about a foot in diameter around the base that was sticking out of the splintered trunk, solid and clear as crystal, tapering down to a tiny sharp point. After a few seconds, the tree groaned loudly and a sharp cracking noise sliced through the night. Jack watched incredulously as the tree, achingly slowly, cracked apart at the entryway of the massive pole of ice and the top half fell backwards, gaining speed until it landed against another tree with a large _boom!_ and a clatter of branches. Elsa jumped and looked up at the sound, looking frightened and strained. The settling of the branches creaked around them again until there was silence once more.

Jack just stared in shock, but Elsa got to her feet after a minute.

"Give me my gloves," she said quietly.

"What?" asked Jack, still staring at the spot that the top of the tree had come to rest.

"I said, _give me my gloves!_" she shrieked, whipping her entire body around to face Jack, blocking his view of the fallen tree. He immediately looked up and was startled still to see her eyes wide and alight with wildness, her hands balled into fists at her sides and her her usual regal posture replaced with a wide stance of aggression. "_Right now! _I'm leaving!"

Jack scrambled to his feet. "No, wait! Come on, it was working! I saw, in the beginning, you were _controlling_ it-"

"Don't you try to console me, Jackson Frost," she spat the words with venom, and Jack faltered for a minute. Never in his long existence had it occurred to him that his name could be lengthened to 'Jackson'. Elsa turned and stomped away to where the broken tree stood, and she stuck her hands out violently to spread them wide on the surface of the ice pole.

Jack was still stunned into silence. He had never seen her so angry, not even when he had grabbed her arm and hadn't let it go upon their less-than-formal first meeting.

"This is what I am Jack," whispered Elsa. She didn't look up, and her disheveled hair hung limply out of it's braiding around her hunched shoulders, hiding her face from him. "I felt like I was going to crack apart for a tiny bit of control, and everything exploded. I don't think I can try any harder than that. This is all I'll ever have. I'll never be able to control the power. My only hope is to be able to control myself enough to stop myself from doing it."

Jack didn't point out that she this whole attempt had been about not concentrating at all, not about concentrating harder, but he shoved the words back down his throat. Instead, he walked a few steps to where Elsa was standing hunched, her fingers spread across the ice. He hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder.

"Why is this so bad?" he asked quietly. "What's so wrong about this? Why do you want to hide it so much?"

It seemed as if all the anger and fight had drained out of Elsa, leaving her limp and frailer than Jack had ever seen her.

"You don't understand," she said finally, her voice cracking, "I can't just be like you, throwing ice and snow out of my hands left and right. No one can see you doing that." Jack felt a pang at the words, but pushed the feeling aside quickly to listen to her as she continued. "My parents left for a cousin's wedding a few weeks ago, and now people are watching my sister's and I's every move while they're gone. If my sister so much as talks to a few of the local children, it's in the paper the next day that she's having an affair with a peasant! And she's just thirteen! It's truly absurd. And I can't even protect her from it, because I'm locked inside my room all day, afraid that I'll hurt her and everyone and anyone else if I leave it."

Her voice had grown faster and more desperate throughout the statement, and she sucked in a breath afterwards, obviously holding back tears.

"I'm so sorry." For a moment, Jack was almost thankful for his simple and lonely life. There was always the dull ache of needing people, but he was at least spared from the onslaught of conflicting emotions that was relationships.

Then he remembered that first night when he had woken up under the moon, with only his name in the blank slate that was his mind. He had discovered his new abilities and was overjoyed along with pleasantly confused, before realizing that no one could see or hear him. He remembered the horrible weeks and months afterwards, all the experiments that he had done to try and get people to notice him. How he had eventually fallen into a hopeless depression, and threw himself in front of a train. And then another. And then when nothing had worked, he had stayed underwater for an entire day until he realized that he couldn't die. He decided that if he wasn't able to have other people or even death, he wasn't going to deny himself the simple pleasure of being in the world.

Being as it may, Elsa was staring at him in a desperate sort of way that was obviously in need of consoling, despite her earlier angry comments. Jack squeezed her shoulder in a way he hoped was comforting enough.

"I understand that it seems like the only answer is to give up. But I believe in this. I believe in you," said Jack, looking at Elsa and trying to see her clearly through his own feelings. "I know you're going to get this. You have so much power, it's obvious that you're going to take a little time. Just remember that it's going to happen, one way or another, eventually, and I'm going to be here to help you through it. Just remember what you're doing this for."

Elsa looked back at him, and he watched her anger fade, to be replaced with a pain that made him want to cry just watching it. Her hands on the ice were tinged pink with the cold, but it didn't seem to bother her.

"I'm doing this for them," she whispered, her fingers momentarily clenching on the ice. "I'm doing it so that I can finally know them without being scared about what I might do all the time." Her eyes unfocused as if she was looking past Jack and into the uncertain and possibly hopeful future. He knew that she was talking about her family when she said 'them'.

Without speaking, Jack took one of Elsa's hands off of the side of the ice and held it, feeling the dampness of the meltwater and the frigidness of her palm. He guided her into sitting down in the snow, right there, next to the broken tree. Her other hand slid off the ice and fell limply into her lap. Jack still felt awkward, especially holding her hand when she had been so angry at him just minutes before, but he truly wanted to make her feel better. As the silent minutes ticked on, he racked his brain for something to say.

"Tell me about your sister," asked Jack after a moment. Elsa jerked up and out of her thoughts, startled, before slowly processing his question.

"She's thirteen," Elsa hesitantly started, apparently forgetting that she had already mentioned that fact. "Three years younger than me, and always full of energy. She's always so happy. And, in a way, I'm glad that she's a happy person without a sister around, instead of a sad person without a sister around." A moment of silence was shared before Elsa continued on. "She talks to everyone about everything, and it always hurts the worst when I have to ignore her. I see her outside of my room, and I have to turn around and slam the door in her face. And when she knocks, I either shoot her down . . . or I . . . just d-don't answer." She said the words as if she were admitting to a crime worse than murder.

More silence.

"Jack, I just love her so much. If I'm doing this for anyone besides myself, I'm doing this for her. I feel as if I had the choice for her to forget me, then I would, because watching her suffer for all these years has almost been my undoing." Elsa began crying in earnest, her shoulders shaking and her breaths coming in shallow gasps.

_That's a hard thing to say, Elsa, _Jack thought, _having people suffer because they love you might just be a bit better than having them walk through you as if you are no more than air. It's selfish, but it's true._

Instead of saying that, he dropped his staff to the ground beside them and reached forward to grab her other hand, so that he was now holding both, his own skin not as cold as her near-frozen palms. "But you haven't been undone. You haven't let go of yourself. Because you have hope. And that's truly all you need."

When Elsa looked up at him, she smiled through her tears. Jack saw the silver of the moon glinting off of her hair, and the bright blue of her eyes against her pale skin. He decided right there that blue and white were the most beautiful colors in the world, when distributed correctly. His feelings were suddenly tangled. This girl had nice coloring, sure, but she was condescending and moody. He shouldn't feel any different from when she yelled at him a little while ago. He blinked against the sudden confusion that was begging to differ. The confusion felt strangely warm, and warmth was foreign to him.

"Yeah," was all Elsa answered.

For a few minutes, there was only the sound of light wind against light snow, and light wind through light branches. The moon shined down it's pale light, and Jack looked up at it, with questioning. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elsa follow his gaze up to the shining disk, surrounded by pinpricks of stars.

_Why did you send me here? What am I supposed to do? What am I feeling? _The moon didn't answer his silent questions.

"What's your story?" asked Elsa quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"How do you feel about your powers? How do you feel about you life? What's your story?" she repeated.

"I don't have a story," said Jack, feeling anger spark his veins. "I don't have a life."

Elsa's gaze was sharp as she slowly drew back her hands from where Jack had been holding them between them. "Yes," she said firmly, "You do."

She folded her hands in her lap and stared at him determinedly, daring him to tell her otherwise.

"I've never known anyone. Never! I've roamed this place along and without aims, only playing pranks when I can to bring a little bit of fun into the god damn depressing world!" Jack thrusted his hands into the air above him, feeling a thrill of release as he finally yelled to someone about what it felt like. "Every day I would get up and not know what to do with myself. No one to see and no places to go. I choose everything for no reason. There was absolutely no reason why I did anything. Before I came here."

He stared wildly at Elsa, breathing hard, his hands still in the air. Elsa was watching him, her expression that of complete concentration.

"No one has ever seen me before, Elsa-"

"I see you."

He faltered and fell silent. The air was cold and without sound, and it felt as if the wind and the night were both holding their breath.

"I see you," repeated Elsa, without looking away from him. "_I see you_."

Jack didn't answer, but didn't break her gaze. He closed his mouth and simply looked, trying to put all the pain and fury and pure unjustness of it all into his eyes.

The silence stretched on for a minute, but to Jack, it felt like an entire season of staring into Elsa's eyes and trying to convey his agony.

"Maybe," started Elsa, "You didn't end up here just to help me control myself. Maybe you ended up here because I'm going to help you too. Maybe I'm going to help you realize what it is like to be seen."

Maybe. _Maybe_, _maybe_, _maybe_.

Even when Jack had found Elsa, he hadn't stopped feeling as if he was by himself in the world. Nothing had ever grown before that time and this time, but the feeling was suddenly there nonetheless.

_Maybe I'm not alone._

_Maybe._

Elsa slowly stood up, offering her hand then to help Jack. He took the hand without question and stood up. Elsa grasped his hand for a moment longer than necessary, before letting go and turning towards another tree. This one was only a sapling, not nearly as old as the now broken tree had been, with young, smooth bark.

She sighed softly, and it was like the sound of a stream trickling to rest in a forest pool. She raised her hands, palms open towards the bark, and it looked as if she were offering herself forward to the tree. Elsa closed her eyes just as a stream of snowflakes gently and effortlessly flowed out of the tips of her fingers. Her face was smooth and relaxed as the snow hit the tree bark and crackled into frost, swirling into intricate ovals. She stayed standing there for a moment with her eyes closed before the frost stopped. Her eyes then flashed open and she turned in a single quick movement, her violet cloak swirling and wrapping around her body before swinging free and then twirling back the other direction with the momentum. Her smile was as light as Jack had ever seen it, the glow of the moon or even the sun paling in comparison.

He smiled back at her victory, and thought that he might have just had a victory over himself as well.

Elsa hesitantly reached out her hand and let it rest on the side of his arm, her smile fading to something more blank and neutral. For the first time, Jack felt warmth radiating from her fingertips through his shirt sleeve, and sending fire into his veins. The fire was strange and unyielding, and Jack was startled. He had never felt fire before in his life, let alone any type of warmth. Her professional expression scared him a little after her openness. And then she smiled again, smaller this time, but open all the same, and Jack realized how close she was.

She was so close.

"It's getting late," said Elsa quickly. Her smile disappeared and she regally plucked her gloves from the pocket of Jack's vest, putting them on quickly before turning and walking away without another word. She was suddenly an elegant adult again, going back to the castle after a simple walk in the woods.

Jack watched her leave and the heat in his veins spread through his body, only seeming to grow.

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><p><strong>Ahh, yes. The beginnings of . . . SOMETHING. MWAHAHAHA.<strong>

**I did some research, and it never said that Jack's immortality had anything to do with being indestructible, but it also didn't say anything against it. So I just assumed that he couldn't be hurt. Welp.**

**I stick as many little song references as I can in there. And then I go back later in the day to my little story with it's little references and I laugh. I laugh alone in my room in the dark at my little pathetic Frozen references. **

**GUESS WHO THE COUSINS WHO ARE GETTING MARRIED ARE? THE ONES THAT ELSA'S PARENTS ARE VISITING? HMMMM?**

**Review and make me happy? :D**


	6. Night Five

**HEYO. How're you doing? Good? Okay! GREAT! LET'S GET ON WITH IT.**

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><p>Whenever Jack spoke, he felt it. Whenever he looked at her, it was there. Ever-present and flowing in his veins. It made him feel light-headed, as if he was floating through the starry night.<p>

Elsa was in front of him, with her usual messy up-do and her violet cloak. Jack had her gloves in his pocket, and he had almost convinced himself that the fire that he felt burning inside his chest wasn't there. It was a weird feeling, conflicting with the cold that was usually always present in his body. This was different, melting his insides, making his head go fuzzy. He also knew that it was only emotional, however, and didn't stress about it as he tried to get Elsa to strengthen her control. Why bother thinking about something that made him confused and yet elated for no apparent reason?

Jack tried to focus, but the lesson went by in a blur of the icy air glancing off of his heated face. Elsa asked him questions and he stumbled over half of the answers. When she replied with strange looks that seemed halfway between amusement and irritation, Jack found himself distracted by her eyes. He would catch himself and blink for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. What was wrong with him? He didn't want to let himself come to the inevitable conclusion.

Feelings? For _Elsa_? The uptight rich girl that just so happened to see him? Sure, she had a pretty pale face with bright blue eyes. But _her_? The more he thought about it, the more he felt that it was just in his head. Yeah, she was pretty. Maybe even beautiful. But that didn't mean that Jack was attracted to her. He was basically still a teenage boy, and he had never felt feelings for anyone before, so it had to start somewhere. It didn't mean that Jack actually wanted anything to do with Elsa. It was just his hormones for God's sake.

He couldn't deny that something had grown in him since they had talked a few nights previously. Since then, he had felt constantly warm, and maybe even hot if she had ever brushed against him accidentally. But she had been cool and distant the whole time, without ever bringing up the conversation. She had laughed at a few of his jokes since then, though, and Jack couldn't remember her doing that ever before. The thought was surprisingly satisfying. He slapped himself mentally. She had opened just a little bit more, and now he was getting all flustered.

_Jesus Christ, why am I being so stupid? She was being nice to me, and now it's messing with my head. She's being normal now, thank God, but I need to get over this. I don't have time to start lying to myself about what I feel._

Plus, the warmth in Jack's body felt weird. He had never felt anything but cold before, and all of a sudden his blood was rushing through his limbs and to his cheeks every time he made a simple observation of Elsa. If he wanted to actually focus on teaching, this was going to have to stop. It couldn't be good for his health to start feeling warm all the time, either.

"Hello? Earth to Jack!" Elsa's voice cut through his thoughts. "Knock, knock, anyone home?" She was waving her hand playfully in front of his face, a small touch of amusement in her expression

"Uh, yeah, do it again," burst out Jack, trying to remember what she had actually been doing.

"You've told me to repeat this three times now, and originally I was only supposed to do it twice. Are you feeling a bit occupied?" Elsa rolled her eyes and turned around, her question being an apparent joke, not waiting for an answer. "I think I've done enough."

Jack ran his hand through his hair, trying to think. It was a strange mix of emotions, being truly annoyed that Elsa was making fun of him and struggling to come up with an answer to impress her at the same time.

But Elsa had, surprisingly, already followed his blurted suggestion, and the lesson continued on in its blurred state. Jack's thoughts just kept piling up, like trees continuing to fall on top of each other, each with more branches and thoughts and ideas of their own. Elsa was just one girl in the world of a billion. Why did Jack look at her like this? There were probably a million girls that Jack had laid eyes on in his existence, and not one had stopped him long enough to make him think. It was all because Elsa could see him. That was the first thing that had made him stop and look at her truly, and start thinking about the life of another person besides his own.

The way Jack had compensated for having no one was to pretend people didn't exist at all. He would make mischief and play secretly with oblivious children, but he never thought of them as other beings that he could feel for and build relationships with. This girl was his first, and he didn't know what to do with himself. He had never had people to keep him company before, and now it was difficult to learn how to interact.

And she was a _girl_, for Christ's sake! Someone that he wouldn't have been able to probably communicate with very easily even if he _had_ grown up as a child into a teenager surrounded by other people who saw him!

And now he was catching himself glancing at her messy hair or her pale, freckled cheeks more and more often.

Jack felt the caution inside of him. The feeling that he didn't want to put himself out there. He wasn't ready to deal with humans and human feelings yet, after being whatever he was for so long. He was terrified to open up to this random girl in this snowy night. And, with another self-conscious glance at Elsa, he thought that she would probably be just as guarded. There she was with her regal posture and the expression of an adult with a life full of responsibility. Sure, she was only - what? Sixteen? - but she had probably already left her years of childhood and simple crushes behind her. Hell, she might already be arranged to marry someone.

Jack felt an unexpected surge of bitterness at the thought, and he swallowed against the tightness in his throat, trying not to let the sudden anger he felt show on his face. Why was he feeling jealous now? He had just been complaining about his possible slight feelings in the first place, and now he was feeling envy for someone that may or may not exist. It was pathetic.

But Jack couldn't help looking up at Elsa, studying her concentrating face and the way her dress didn't quite cover her collarbone. Her waist, trimmed in navy velvet, her small hands, held fearlessly up to the night.

_Why is having these feelings so wrong?_

The thought was like a breath of fresh air after being held under water. Jack's eyes widened, and he considered the ideas.

What if she didn't have a suiter? What if she felt the same thing, the burning warmth, the tickling brushing over his skin?

Jack's hand trembled, and he fought the urge to reach out and swipe a strand of hair from her face.

God, he couldn't just go over there and grab her. Even if she might - _might_ - have the same slight feelings, she would probably be disgusted if Jack were to just touch her for no apparent reason. Embarrassment suddenly ran through Jack, and he felt his cheeks flush against the frosted clouds of his breath. He had finally admitted it to himself; he wanted to have more of a relationship with Elsa. But that was where the problem lied: what if Elsa didn't feel the same way? What if Elsa barely even liked him? What if she only tolerated him because he had similar powers? What if she thought he was annoying? Obnoxious? Perverted? Jack shrank in on himself with each new possibility.

But each minute hardened his resolve. The way that Elsa was standing there, just far enough away that she was out of reach, facing away from him, hardly ever glancing back, drove him insane. He wanted to see her sneak a glance over her shoulder, blush as he did, brush against him accidentally, tell a joke - _anything_. Anything to show that she may feel it too. It became stronger and stronger as the moon sank lower in the sky, the ideas swirling in his mind. He could do it; he could declare himself.

_But that would be stupid_, he thought, frustrated. _Why can't she just do it herself?_

And there Jack was, again faced with the possibility that Elsa might feel anywhere between complete disinterest to utter disgust with him. He sighed aloud. In front of him, Elsa still struggled to create a statue of ice that looked like a tree, making small frustrated noises as the frosty branches grew brittle and disintegrated into the winter air.

Jack let his eyes linger on her crouched form, unable to see her face due to her posture angled away from his vision. But he couldn't wait forever, right? Soon the lessons on control would end, and Jack would leave Arendelle to wander the Earth aimlessly again. Elsa would marry some royal from another kingdom and grow old as a queen while Jack would live in Pennsylvania, seventeen and alone forever.

Unless he did something.

Before he could lose this sudden wild burst of courage and reason, Jack called out, "Elsa!"

She looked over from her position in the snow. "What?"

"I think you've done enough for tonight," said Jack, trying not to let his growing discomfort get to him. He looked over Elsa's head, feeling embarrassed, gazing above the tree tops at the first gray light of dawn.

"Can I actually . . . show you something?" he asked self-consciously, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair to distract himself from his goal.

"Um. I guess," said Elsa giving him a questioning look. She stood, brushing the snow off of the front of her dress. At first, she had been terrified whenever she hadn't worn her gloves, but now the bare-handedness felt apparently natural to her, and the gloves were forgotten in Jack's pocket.

"What are you going to show me?" asked Elsa as she stopped in front of Jack. She sounded slightly wary.

"It's . . . a surprise." Jack winced at how brittle his voice felt. Goddamn the nerves. "Come here."

She barely moved an inch. "What?"

Jack swallowed against his discomfort. "Come on! I'm not going to bite." He forced himself to smile.

This time, Elsa started walking towards him, her steps growing into more hesitation the closer she got to Jack.

She stopped when she was a few inches away. "Seriously, what are we doing?"

Jack glanced away from her face and at the ever-lightening sky. He could just see the roofs of buildings over the treetops, shiny tiles gleaming in the orange of the rising sun.

"I promise, you're going to love it." Jack stepped forward so that there was barely any space between them. "Sorry, but this is kind of required."

And without giving Elsa time to move away, he wrapped his arms securely around her body and gave a silent command to the wind.

Elsa yelped at the contact, but with a roar, the pair was caught up into the air. Within seconds, they were above the trees, looking down at the snow glowing a bright apricot in the break of day. She screamed and buried her face into Jack's chest, gripping the front of his shirt with a ferocity that suggested she thought she was going to fall.

"Hey! It's fine!" yelled Jack, trying not to shiver and feel too satisfied with Elsa's touchy reaction. It was awesome that she wasn't trying to fight him instead, but he also didn't want her to be scared.

They were in the clouds, mists of ice-cold vapor sliding around them, whisper-light and dampening their clothes. The sunrise was almost starting, and Jack could see an orange sliver on the edge of the horizon. The ground was far below, the forest extending to the west, with the distant castle casting lights across the snow. The town was just beginning to wake up, carts and horses like ants against the far-away road.

Elsa moved her head back, looking down. Her breaths grew shallow, and her grip grew even harder.

"W-what the hell? How - what -" her mumblings grew incoherent, her head whipping back and forth as she took in the view.

After a few minutes of silence, Jack felt Elsa's breathing growing more even and relaxed, but her hold on his clothing didn't lessen. He felt that the time to break the silence would be better now than never.

"I won't drop you. We won't fall. You're completely safe," said Jack quietly. He changed his grip so that both of his arms were around her waist, her snow boots propped on top of his feet. She shivered at the change, unconsciously leaning closer to Jack and away from the open air. He knew it was just her safety instincts, but he felt slightly smug that she was relying on him so much just the same.

"How long have you been able to do this? How did you learn?" Elsa's voice was shaky when she finally spoke, but her hands were gradually loosening on the front of his shirt as she gazed down at everything. The fear was leaking out of her expression, and she looked more and more in awe of the distant world. All around them was empty sky, and it made the planet seem so much bigger. When not even the air was a limit, how much uncharted territory really was there?

"I've been able to do it for as long as I can remember," said Jack truthfully. While Elsa was looking everywhere around them, Jack found it hard to take his eyes from her face.

Then there was more silence, Elsa eventually letting go of Jack altogether, leaning out, above his encircled arms, and stretching out her hands to linger in clouds of vapor. She unexpectedly let out a laugh of delight, and Jack saw the wonder and joy on her face.

God, how did he not notice how beautiful she was sooner? For the first time since he had seen her as a child that first, fateful night, Jack saw the expression of a child. She wasn't just a hard shell like she tried to convey; the young girl was still right there. She just needed gentleness and coaxing.

The sun was almost halfway visible, flooding the land in bright oranges and pinks. Wordlessly, he commanded the wind to slowly begin moving them. Elsa immediately withdrew her arms from the sky, back to clutching Jack's shirt. But she had very little fear, just excitement. They gradually picked up speed, until they were parallel to the very-distant ground, flying like a bird. Jack heard Elsa whooping into the early morning light, and he smiled, letting his laughter get caught up in the roaring wind, swirling along behind them, the white noise lost in the clouds.

After a few minutes, he heard Elsa calling him, and he slowed down to hear her.

"Jack! I think I'm actually getting a little cold."

He slowed to a stop, and the rush of wind was gone, and there was just him and her, alone in the sky, with glowing orange over their faces, smiling and laughing wordlessly as they gazed at each other.

Elsa's hair was fully out of her braid, tumbling free over her shoulders, tangled and windswept, looking like a pale lion's mane. Jack had never seen her face so alight, her expression so free. Her shoulders were shaking with her laughter, her eyes crinkled, her smile wide. Jack was laughing with her, feeling floaty and if he had left his fear and sadness behind them.

Eventually, they fell into silence, but it was a comfortable kind of silence. A light breeze played with Elsa's hair, causing strands to wind about and fly against Jack's cheeks. There was no space between their bodies, one of Jack's arms around her back and the other looped securely around her waist, holding them together. There were maybe a few inches between their faces.

Jack's chest was against Elsa's, and he felt her heartbeat alongside his own, racing just as fast. He could count each and every one of Elsa's eyelashes, if he stopped to focus. Her hair was a curtain blocking out the rest of the world, blocking the view of the castle and the rest of the sky.

Elsa was gazing right at him, the intensity in her eyes almost tangible. She was looking right at Jack, without glancing away. Jack could feel it in the racing of his heart, the quickening of their breaths, the tightening of their arms. He felt Elsa's bare fingers on his collarbone, slightly above the edge of his shirt. He could smell her skin, clear and crisp like ice, with a slight hint of sugar or something flowery.

Without thinking, he was leaning forward, gazing across the lines of her face. Ever so lightly, he felt the tip of his nose brush hers, and then he moved upwards, feeling his lips grazing her cheekbone slightly. She breathed something that sounded like a soft sigh into the hollow of his throat, her lips light as a butterfly's wings against his chin. He felt her eyelashes closed against his cheek, and he breathed in her scent, trying to memorize it. He closed his eyes, feeling the airy sensations of their skin barely brushing together, drunk in the moment, eyelashes like soft blades of grass. He wished he had his hands free so that he could trail them across her arms or something.

After a second that felt too short, Elsa pulled away, right before Jack had almost leaned all the way in to finish what he had started. Barely an inch of space between them, Elsa let out an airy laugh, her breath washing over his face. Jack felt the disappointment like an ache in his stomach, but Elsa was smiling at him, and it was too damn distracting.

"Jack, I have to go back. Take me to the ground." He could hardly hear her voice in the wind.

Dazedly, he obeyed. As soon as they were on the ground, Elsa gently extracted herself from his arms, her hands lingering for a moment. Then she smiled at him, pecked him on the cheek, and turned around, walking away.

"I'll see you tomorrow night!" she called cheerfully over her shoulder. Then she was just a billowing violet cloak in the distance, and Jack could see her hurriedly tying her hair up as she began to run, trying to get back before morning had fully woken the castle.

Jack reached up to touch the place on his cheek where she had kissed him, feeling the heat on his skin. the fire in his veins was more ferocious than ever, surging through his body and making coming back to reality very hard. His mind kept reliving the sensations that he had just experienced. He almost laughed allowed when he remembered the fears that he had felt about the warmth. How could he have thought something that was so right might have been wrong?

His feelings towards Elsa suddenly seemed a thousand times stronger, and he felt as if strings were tied to each of his limbs, raising them higher each time he took a step. He was being held up with those strings, and he thought that there had never been a sunrise so beautiful, and he remembered how the light looked glancing off of Elsa's pale hair.

The night couldn't come soon enough.

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><p><strong>I am almost tearing up, that was so beautiful to write asdfghjkl;;j**

**BAI.**


	7. Night Six

**Yup. I've been super busy/lazy. But I'm not dead. Yet.**

**Luckily, I'm already working on the next chapter. :D Aaaaand there are only, like, three more left anyways. HAVE A GOOD TIME.**

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><p>Jack wished he had a watch.<p>

Time never had passed so slowly, and Jack was sure that if he did actually have a timepiece of some kind, the two hands would be frozen still, mocking him. The sun never seemed to sink any lower, and when Jack took to staring at it and waiting, he just felt unbearably hot. Another good thing would come with the night; the coolness of having only the moon gazing down on this side of the earth.

Jack felt a buzzing inside of his head. And tingling on his skin. And blood rushing in his cheeks.

_Oh God_, he thought, feeling waves of distracting sensations as he was suddenly concentrating on his body.

This was all because of her. Elsa. Her laugh and her face and her constant grouchiness. He smiled just at the thought. And to think, just the day before he was unsure about how he felt.

And it seemed as if she felt the same way! Jack involuntarily stood up from his crouch in the snow and started roaming the woods aimlessly, to be in movement with his thoughts. He swung his staff in a wide arch of careless happiness. Usually Jack would have gone to the town during the day in order to entertain himself, but he found that he would much rather stay in the same spot under the trees. The spot where Elsa had bid him goodbye that early morning, kissing his cheek in the process. He immediately brightened and his itching impatience drained away for a moment. It was late afternoon already, and soon Jack would be able to see Elsa again.

He imagined greeting her. Maybe embracing her to say hello. A sudden wave of self-consciousness washed over Jack, and he ruffled his hair in discomfort. He hoped that Elsa would be as eager to see him as he was to see her. It would be awkward if she wasn't.

Jack scoffed at how . . . _girly_ he was getting. Then he rolled his eyes and decided to think about that when he wasn't so preoccupied.

For not the first time in the last few hours, Jack felt a rush of satisfaction that Elsa was a girl his age. Or at least, what seemed to be around his age. Jack thought about it for a moment. How old was he? Fifteen? Twenty? He looked down to examine his hands, setting his staff down for a moment, before confirming that he was probably somewhere in between, which he had decided a century ago. Whatever his physical age might appear, Jack was reaching his one-hundred and twentieth birthday in a few years, and he didn't feel any sort of adult maturity forming in the least.

But yes, Jack couldn't think of another age or gender that he would rather Elsa to be. She was stubborn yet hard working, funny yet headstrong. Jack felt himself admiring things that he had previously thought were utterly annoying.

A sudden crackle in the undergrowth to Jack's right alerted him. He started, jerking his gaze towards the source of the sound. A pair of wide, dark eyes gazed back at him from a brown-furred face. A deer. It watched Jack warily, its head lowered to be almost at his level. However hesitant it seemed, Jack could see no fear in its eyes.

It was strange to think that the deer was completely unafraid of Jack, while it would have fled from any other human. Except, Jack wasn't sure he was human at all, and that must have been the reason for the deer's lack of fear. He sighed.

When the deer turned and began to walk through the undergrowth deeper into the woods, Jack simply followed. He had a good sense of direction and nothing else to do except wait with his thoughts.

The deer never looked back, seemingly uninterested in its follower, trampling through the steadily thicker undergrowth. Jack had to start travelling through the branches of trees after a few minutes, the bushes growing too dense to walk through. The sky was barely visible between the leaves above, a grayish blue of wispy clouds, sliced apart by criss-crosses of thin, interlacing branches. The trees were brittle and gray with winter, covered in a skin of ice. The snow crackled softly under the deers delicate footing, previously virgin and unbroken due to the apparent inaccessibility of this thicker part of the forest. The castle was being left farther and farther behind Jack, but he knew he would be able to return to it would just leave the cover of trees and take to the sky.

Eventually, Jack and the deer stopped at a small, slightly unfrozen creek. The water was shallow and trickling lightly through the streambed, the usual silence accompanied by a pleasant gurgling sound. A partially thawed edging of ice jutted over the water from both sides, having covered the flow previously, but then melted by the movement of the unfrozen water underneath. When Jack looked up, the deer had already begun to walk away, up the incline that the stream was feeding from. Jack decided not to follow, and stepped into the water. It was pleasantly icy with meltwater, his ankles creating deep ripples in the current.

He began walking downhill through the stream, curving where it curved and making random and pointless ice patterns on the trees that bordered the water. He would just out with his staff to tap them where they stood on the bank. It was peaceful and relaxing, and when Jack looked up at the sky again through the breakage of trees above the stream, it was lit with orange to the west, and rapidly darkening above. Jack's heart picked up speed, pounding audibly against the front of his ribcage. He would see Elsa in just an hour or so. Jack's mood rising instantly, his pace grew faster until he noticed that the water in the creek was becoming more shallow.

Right up ahead, the trees had parted considerably, and Jack saw the lake's frozen surface gleaming in the dim light. In the time of a few minutes, Jack was standing on the lake's edge in just a few inches of partially frozen water. When all the snow melted, the water would flood the creek and rush down the hill to that very spot, and then would churn into the lake and melt the ice with the flow. He wondered if he would be there to see it, still in Arendelle when spring arrived.

Jack stepped onto the lake and walked across its glassy surface towards a familiar bit of bank. It was clear of trees and covered with about two feet of snow. It was also the very bank where Jack had first stepped into the sightline of Elsa. He smiled slightly at the memory, remembering how he had chased her down the path towards the castle. It seemed like it was years ago already.

When Jack reached the bank, he walked across the familiar bit of undergrowth until he reached the recently felled tree. There, nearly hidden in a cluster of branches, was Elsa's unfinished statue. It was standing where it had been left the previous night. Jack sat down cross legged on the horizontal trunk and laid his staff across his lap, trying to make his gaze wander from where it was now fixed on the path. The sky was dark and the sunset almost gone, the trees casting long, dark shadows across the glittering snow.

Jack waited, his heartbeat growing in anticipation by the minute. He wondered what he should do when she made her way to the fallen tree. Should he try to act cool and ignore that it had happened, while flirting with her obviously? Should he just walk right up, get it over with and kiss her? The feeling Jack was getting however, was just that his thoughts would most likely be swept away when she walked up, and that he would probably trip over himself while being awkward. But that idea wasn't as scary as he thought it would be. He just wanted to see Elsa and make her laugh.

The sky was fully dark within an hour, and the absence of light seemed to calm Jack's nerves a bit. He didn't sleep often, but he felt drowsy all of a sudden. He smiled into the inky shadows of the trees, imagining just laying in the snow beside Elsa and just gazing up at the stars. With the idea, Jack quickly looked up to find that the sky was full of clouds covering even the bright glow of the moon. There would be no star-gazing that night; but that didn't really matter.

Once another hour had passed, the wind picked up. Jack's moment of meaningless thinking had passed, and he was now tapping his right foot anxiously against the log. Elsa usually showed up by that time. The moon was now gathering height, almost invisible behind the clouds, and Jack glanced up at it so often it would probably appear that he had a twitch. It was his only sense of the time, and it seemed like an eternity so far.

The third hour for Jack was spent in a state of growing worry. His heartbeat picked up speed again, and his pathetic thoughts about how to greet Elsa were thrown to the winds as he began pacing around the small clearing. All he wanted was for her to show up now. The minutes seemed to be just ticking along by now. Jack eventually decided, on impulse, to go to the pathway. After stumbling awkwardly from the undergrowth in his anxiousness, Jack arrived on the edge of the path and sat in a snowbank, tapping his foot again. He could see all the way down the path to the castle wall if he squinted, and there wasn't a single bit of movement. Not a swish of a violet cloak to be seen.

Jack didn't know why he was being stubborn, but for some reason he was attached to the idea of Elsa coming to meet him. He wasn't supposed to care if something came up and she abruptly couldn't meet him. If he had never suddenly started feeling for her, he wouldn't have cared if she couldn't make it to a meeting one time. But now Jack's yearning was like a physical ache, and he knew he would be bitterly disappointed if he had to wait a whole other day before seeing her again. He wanted _her_ to make a move, to show that she cared. He wanted her to sneak out of the window and into the forest to see him.

It was midnight when Jack finally swallowed his pride and started determinedly down the path and towards the dark castle. It was lucky he had such good eyesight, or he probably would have impaled himself on a branch or something along the way. It took him a whole seven steps before he relented to his desire to make it there as soon as possible. Hell, he was giving in to chasing her now, why not get there quicker? He jumped into the air and flew, feeling as his cloak lifted up off of his body in the wind.

Within minutes he was at the gates of the castle's high stone wall, and landed silently like a cat. He forgot that he was invisible to almost all people, and crept through the shadows towards the many windows, before mentally slapping himself and stepping into the open to walk towards the old tree leaning against the wall in a much quicker route. He then flew up, parallel to the wall, until he landed in the high branch that was jutting below the large, triangular window.

Jack had only seen the window twice before, but it was still strange to see it covered with a thick royal blue curtain. He stood there uncertainly for a moment, shaking slightly with nerves. What if Elsa was sick or just simply tired? Would it be weird that he was outside her window knocking for her like a crazy person? He crouched, going over his options for a few minutes, before standing again, grinding his teeth and tapping softly on the window before he could stop himself.

He waited, cringing slightly, for a bit.

Nothing.

Jack tapped again, a little louder this time. He stood on the branch, his arm still raised from the knock, holding his breath. He gazed through the glass at the curtain, wishing he could see through it to see if Elsa was in there. The curtains fibers looked thick though, and his vision wasn't able to penetrate it. After a minute, there was still no answer.

Jack rapped his knuckles sharply on the glass, listening to the hollow echo sink into the curtains.

Jack spent the next hour knocking. His taps grew into a crescendo of slamming his fist into the glass and the window frame, calling Elsa's name, hoping she would hear. He would stop after each strike and sit silently for a moment, waiting for the sound of muffled, approaching footsteps. He hoped that if anyone opened the curtains, it would be her.

Soon, he stopped. It was clear that no one was coming anytime soon. So he ended his frenzied attempts to pound through the window and sat on the high branch, his back against the windowsill with the back of his head resting on the ice-cold glass. He wrapped his cloak around himself and waited. He waited six hours until he knocked again, in the pink-grey light of a receding dawn. There was no answer.

Jack spent four days knocking on the window, never leaving the branch. Every night it felt as if he were holding his breath for hours, praying and hoping that the stupid curtains would be whisked aside all of a sudden, and he would see Elsa's startled face a foot from his own. Each sunrise that he witnessed, it seemed that his heart sank lower in his chest. On the beginning of the fifth day, when it felt as if Jack's heart was stone-heavy in his stomach, he stopped knocking again, this time for good.

The next several days, Jack let himself sleep on the same branch. He had never lost himself to unconsciousness so often in his life, but then again, he had never woken up as tired as he did every time he opened his eyes.

The cold started to get more intense, and Jack felt as if the fire in his veins had burned out. He didn't know whether to feel angry or terrified, and he seemed to be experiencing an uncomfortable amount of both. The only time that he could feel an echo of the tingling that used to be ever-present was when he remembered the one night he had with Elsa, speeding through the early-morning clouds. He quickly feel back into despair with any other thought. He tried not to let himself contemplate what had happened. It could have been anything; she could be sick, busy, or simply away. Maybe the guards had caught her sneaking out and she couldn't get away anymore to tell him. Maybe it was unthinkably worse than that. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

. . . .

It had been two weeks since Elsa had disappeared. Or at least disappeared from Jack. He felt as if he would lash out at the first thing that crossed his path. Sometimes he even felt cold, but he had a feeling that he was just making his bodies feel the symptoms of it. He shivered and let his teeth chatter just to distract himself. He was alone with only the wind, his ever-darkening thoughts, and the looming triangular window.

Jack dreaded going to the town. He knew that, if he tried hard enough, he would be able to find and eavesdrop on a conversation that would tell him why the hell Elsa was gone. But in a way, he didn't want any confirmation. He only dreaded finding out that the reason for her absence was of the worst kind. Each time he woke up, the first thing he would do was mentally convince himself for some reason or another not to leave the castle. He was too tired; maybe Elsa would finally open that goddamn window and find him gone; he couldn't bear to learn the truth. But as the days passed, Jack started to run out of arguments.

The day that Jack finally stepped off the branch for the first time in two and a half weeks was the coldest day he had ever experienced. The ground might have been slightly sheltered from the raging storm, but in the air, Jack was in the center of it. It was like a roaring wild animal, wind tearing into his clothes and ice burning his face. Jack could have controlled it with his normal abilities, but today he felt hollow and used up. Broken. It took almost too much effort for him to fly through the gale.

The snow quieted down by the time he reached the little village. The road was full of drifts and the shop windows looked glowing and warm. Jack saw the people milling about at a distance, and slowed down. He felt like he wasn't ready. He wanted more than anything to fly right back to the castle and spend another day knocking on the window, but he steeled himself. He would have to find out sometime. And today was that day.

As Jack neared the people, he knew something was wrong. It made the air feel colder and the shops look less bright. He dropped from the air to walk the rest of the way. His body felt shaky and weak. It only took a few more minutes to confirm his worst fear; it wasn't a trick of the light or the storm. Every person in the village, men, women and children alike, were wearing black. Their faces were sorrowful and gaunt, many of their eyes red from crying and the bitter cold. Death hung in the air over them like a sentence that had struck and intended to strike again.

Jack sagged against the ground, letting out the breath he had been holding in a strangled gasp. Feeling akin to a rotted and frozen tree stump, Jack staggered to his feet and jumped into the wind.

Jack rose faster than he had ever tried before, speeding like a comet away from the ground, screaming wordlessly into the air whipping around him. He wanted his stupid endless existence to be over. He didn't want to face the evidence, the facts laid out clearly before him. He wanted to finally go numb.

When the air was too thin to breath in, Jack looked down. The countryside was a blur of green thousands of miles below him. He could see it through the distant layers of clouds. He glared at it, his face dry and feeling as if it were made of stone. Made of ice.

Jack let himself fall, commanding the wind not to catch him. He gathered speed, rushing down through the clouds, facing upwards toward the stars, feeling the swooping sensation of a bird with suddenly broken wings. He fell for what felt like forever, unable to see the earth beneath his back. His only sense of time was the stars growing more and more distant.

When Jack burst through the final cloud, the world was an icy blur. His felt as if it were still up with the stars, and he had a sickness in his stomach that he had never experienced before. He hoped that it would finally be enough this time.

The roar in his ears was inconceivably loud, but the crunch of his body hitting the ground was impossibly louder. All the breath was driven from his body, his skull apparently cracking in two due to the pain Jack felt. Every inch of him was on fire, and it felt terribly wonderful compared to the hollowness before his fall.

Jack burned on the inside for hours. Or, that was what it felt like. He had very little concept of time during the period of agony. It slowly began to fade, receding from his fingertips, and then from his hands and feet, then curled up into two little balls of pain in his chest and brain. He never once opened his eyes, but allowed himself to flex his fingers experimentally for a little while. Eventually, he fell asleep.

He was asleep a long time.

When there was only a pounding, dull ache, Jack opened his eyes to consciousness. He felt a dusting of snow covering his body, and even more built up along his sides, which meant he had been laying there for at least a day. He sat up achingly slowly, trying not to fall over with the waves of dizziness and nausea. If he had had anything in his stomach he would have vomited long ago; now all he could do was groan until he was propped up on his elbows. There were evergreens towering over him, some of their branches ripped and hanging from Jack's violent descent. The sky was clear and dark, the moon hanging through the clouds like a familiar face.

It was a long time until Jack got to his feet, dusting off the powdery snow and wincing at the pain that shot through him at the movement. He then set off into the shadows, walking without leaving footprints. The only destination he had in mind was away from the growing agony inside of him, that was all mental and nothing to do with the physical aching.

* * *

><p><strong>DON'T FREAK OUT.<strong>

**Okay. You're okay. **

**But - while the feels are fresh - I have a suggestion. (1) Look up Let it Go/Let Her Go by Sam Tsui, and find a lyric video. Since it's only a lyric video, you don't have to worry about many visual distractions. (2) Find your most awesome pair of headphones and lay down, putting on said headphones. (3) Start playing the song, and put a pillow over your face to block out the rest of the world. (4) Imagine Jack, lost in sorrow, somehow breaking into a place that has a piano in it or something and singing/playing the song. (5) Cry.**

**Cheerio.**


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